Edward Mountain
Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party · Scotland
“They should spare a thought for the 1,700 people who make this place work. Do not ignore them. It is they who make it possible for members to do what they do on a daily basis. Secondly, make friends across the chamber. I have tried to do that, and it has delivered for me. Thirdly, focus on one issue. My issue found me.”
“There will be £6.6 billion in co-benefits from the changes in the transport sector, relating to improved health outcomes, increased exercise and reduced pollution, which I mentioned in my statement. I mentioned the changes from the draft plan in my statement and in my response to Sarah Boyack.”
“The other thing that has frustrated me and, I think, many people across Scotland is the constant deflections that we hear. There are cries of, “If only we had the tools and the levers of power that we need.” I gently remind politicians in this Parliament that it is about what is possible, and much is possible in this Parliament.”
“Rhoda Grant has been an incredible champion for crofting—I have seen that come to the fore through the passage of this legislation—and a force for the Highlands and Islands. She has also called for the right to food.”
“Elements of the legislation will help crofters to begin the process of adaptation, but there was room in the bill to speed things up. At stage 2, we proposed giving crofters the benefits from environmental use of the land, an environmental use advice service and public financing.”
“As this will be my last speech in the Parliament, I hope that the minister will excuse me if I touch only briefly on the Crofting and Scottish Land Court Bill. It is nothing like what we were promised in 2016.”
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“Most of us doubted that there was sufficient time left to get it right and ensure that we have a robust, workable law on the statute book. It is fair to say that I am concerned about where we go from here. There are two bits of unsolicited advice that I give to the members in the next parliamentary session, from somebody who will not be here in May. First, please let us not have members’ bills on complex, controversial issues introduced so late in the parliamentary session. It is unfair on the member in charge of the bill and on the lead committee. It is not where we should start from if we want to make good law. Secondly, let us not have another Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, with its near- impossible remit—it is far too wide and diverse and there are far too many issues to keep on top of.”
“Then there are the practical challenges of enforcement, such as those of establishing the thought process in complex corporate cases, of getting right the detail of employer liability and of allowing alternative convictions if the jury is not persuaded that the conduct was bad enough to justify a finding of ecocide. There is also the fact that the current section 40 offence has barely been used at all. Why is that? That needs to be looked at. If the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the bill, those issues are not going to go away. The committee was not unanimous on the general principles, but all of us agreed that if the bill reaches stage 2, evidence will need to be taken on those matters—including views from experts on the wording of the proposed amendments.”
“Prosecutors and regulators emphasised the importance of legal certainty, especially if prosecution could mean a huge fine or a long spell in prison. Doubts were raised about whether some of the current drafting has the legal certainty that is required. There was also a concern about unintended consequences. I referred to the potential deterrent effect as an argument for the bill. It could affect risk appetite, but there is another side of the coin. The bill does not provide a defence of carrying out permitted activities or exercising lawful functions, such as approving a planning application. We heard serious concerns about that. We heard that the bill could have a chilling effect on decision makers.”
“We heard views that it would be one way—not necessarily the only way—to keep pace with revised European law. However, the committee also found two other things. First, the evidence as to whether there is much of a gap in the law is finely balanced. Regulators and prosecutors told us that the existing powers—in particular, section 40 of the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014—appear to be more than capable of addressing quite serious harm. They struggled to identify examples of cases that would clearly have met the proposed ecocide threshold. Secondly, and even more importantly, our scrutiny found significant concerns about the clarity and workability of definitions of key terms in the bill such as “severe environmental harm”, “widespread” and “serious adverse effects”.”
“I congratulate Monica Lennon on introducing the bill. I know that she has put a huge amount of work into it, and we have had a good discussion at stage 1. I thank all those who engaged with the committee during our scrutiny of the bill and, in particular, the committee members and our clerks for their hard work and diligence during the process. The committee agreed from the start that this is a debate worth having. There is a case to be made for strengthening the law. We heard views that the current legal framework lacks an apex offence for serious environmental damage, with penalties to match. We heard about the potential deterrent effect that the new offence might create and how it might influence corporate behaviour for the good, even if prosecutions are rare.”
“On a point of order, Presiding Officer. During general question time, I raised a question on aquaculture. It would have been fair of me to note that I have an interest in a wild salmon fishery—I do so now.”
“I congratulate the industry on complying with the recommendation of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee’s report from 2018 on providing data. The problem is that, for nine years, the industry provided figures for total weight of fish loss, and now they go on numbers of fish lost. Will the cabinet secretary speak to the industry to see whether it can continue to report in the way that it did for nine years and not break what is a sequence of very useful data? Mairi Gougeon: I am happy to look at that issue further and follow it up with Edward Mountain. The numbers are important, but I will have to consider the issue further. Non-fatal Strangulation 5.”
“There is huge concern about the efficacy and safety of any drugs used for assisted dying. As limited information is collected from clinicians and no drugs are available for the on-label purpose of assisted dying, I am not sure how ministers will make that decision.”
“I rise to speak to the motion. This is a complicated matter involving an SI in relation to the Scotland Act 1998. I believe, as do some in the UK Parliament, that the SI is far too narrowly drawn and does not clarify which sections prevent the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill from being within the competence of the Scottish Parliament. It would be helpful if the Scottish Government clarified which parts of the bill do not fall within the competence of the Scottish Parliament. At this stage, I am happy to give way to the minister if he wants to come in. Okay—I see that he does not. As someone who is vehemently against assisted dying, I cannot vote for the SI, as it seeks to allow Scottish Government ministers to identify suitable drugs to assist dying.”
“To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the recent announcement that the total projected cost of MV Glen Rosa has risen by £12.5 million to £197.5 million, whether it will confirm how much further public funding will be required before the vessel enters service. (S6T-02875)”
“If a human had attacked the lady and caused injuries, they would have been removed from that scenario and probably put in prison. However, it seemed fine for a buzzard to do that, because SNH did not want to issue a licence to control it. I support Douglas Ross’s amendments 149 to 151. I do not really care where the licensing function goes, but all I know is that the licensing authority in NatureScot is dysfunctional. I will leave it at that.”
“That is looked at over the whole catchment to see whether a licence should be issued. That is why amendment 60, which calls for reporting on population numbers, proves that there is an inadequacy. SNH is asking for full detailed counts, but the minister seems to think that it can do whatever it likes by simply producing a report. Applying for licences is really difficult. I remember an incident in which a lady who cycled down a hill every day to get to work was attacked by a buzzard. First of all, it destroyed her cycling helmet. She was advised to take another route, but there was not one. The final advice from SNH, which refused to give a licence, was for her to cycle down the hill with an umbrella so that she would be protected from the buzzard. I say to the minister that that shows the inadequacy of SNH.”
“I would like to keep this short. I want to point out some of the contradictions in the minister’s amendment 60 and speak to Douglas Ross’s amendments 149 to 151. The minister will know that the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, as amended, through section 16(1), gives people the right to apply for licences to carry out activities that would not normally be allowed. The power to issue those licences was conferred on Scottish Natural Heritage, or NatureScot, under the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011. I have first-hand experience of applying for licences. When applying for licences, SNH is clear that, if a licence is being applied to control sawbill ducks, for example, counts must be carried out twice a year, with the information submitted to SNH.”
“Our report recommends that the Parliament consents to the relevant provisions of the bill, but we call on the Scottish Government to be on the front foot in using all the powers that it already has and in making the case to Whitehall for a truly UK-wide industrial policy for SAF that makes best use of Scotland’s considerable industrial, natural and human assets. 17:46”
“However, what are the barriers? There is a high price for electricity, which makes it harder for us to compete internationally. What also seemed to be lacking to our witnesses was a sense of the Government having a clear plan for SAF that signals confidence and momentum to potential investors. Our report called on the Scottish Government to get the mothballed SAF working group back to work to look at quick wins, such as whether Grangemouth could be a base for mixing and redistributing biofuels. The UK and Scottish Governments have worked out their differences on order-making powers as the bill has proceeded.”
“Secondly, we found that we need prudent governmental intervention to help the sector achieve lift-off. Thirdly, a price stabilisation mechanism such as that in the bill could help, but this is a framework bill, so the detail will absolutely have to be right. The type of SAF that we need most is so-called power-to-liquid SAF. Biofuels might be the bridge to the next decade, but they are land and resource hungry. The basic building blocks of power-to-fuel SAF are hydrogen and carbon atoms, which never run out. Scotland is well placed in relation to SAF: we have Grangemouth and other industrial assets that could be repurposed; we have the skills base, especially from the oil and gas industry; and we have a strong record in wind energy generation and the potential for growth in green and blue hydrogen and carbon capture.”
“When it comes to legislative consent motions, I sometimes worry about the risk of being typecast, as I always seem to be fated to be the angry convener delivering a speech about the flaws of the LCM process. However, today, the Parliament will be pleased to know that the angry convener will not be here. Although the process in this case did not run perfectly, it ran well enough for the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee to come to a reasonably unrushed view on consent. We even had time to go beyond the narrow bounds of the LCM for a more general look at the state of our SAF industry, and I thank the experts whom we heard from as part of that process. So, what did we find? I have limited time so will give some quick bullet points. First, we found that we need SAF if we are to decarbonise, and we need loads more of it.”
“To ask the Scottish Government what additional resources are being provided to Police Scotland in relation to asylum seekers being housed at Cameron barracks in Inverness. (S6O- 05432)”
“Nonetheless, I will be interested to hear the Government’s response to amendment 24, because I think that the control of “feral species”, and preventing them from multiplying with or challenging our wild species, is important.”
“In the case of the Scottish wildcats that are being reintroduced across the Cairngorms, the control of feral cats would be important, but in other areas it might not be. Amendments 25 and 26 relate specifically to the sheep on St Kilda. I think that Mr Mason, by lodging the amendments, has done this country a service by making sure that the owners are aware that the Parliament is considering the problems with the sheep on St Kilda in a sensible way. They need to be controlled, as lack of control and management will result in all sorts of problems such as increased suffering, disease and starvation. That is completely unacceptable, and it would be unacceptable if they were on a farm on the mainland. I personally would not seek to press amendments 25 and 26 to a vote, because I think that the point has already been made.”
“If we had done that, we would perhaps not now have the fallow deer and many of the other types of deer that are starting to move up from the Borders, nor would we have species such as the ruddy duck—or rather, we would have them, but we would be able to control them. However, I am concerned about the amendment’s use of the term “feral species”, because the definition is quite wide ranging. Mr Mason may not have intended to bring in some of the animals that the term could cover. For example, it could be argued that “feral species” would include cats that have been released into the countryside, which could become feral and could therefore be part of a management plan. That might or might not be a good thing.”
“I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests—I own part of a family farm in Moray. I should also declare that I have been managing the environment on that farm and the local river that runs through it for 45 years. It was some 50 years ago that I first embarked on deer management, and I look forward to going back to that in April, when this session of Parliament is dissolved. I will speak to amendments 24 to 26, which have been lodged by John Mason. They are interesting amendments, and I have some sympathy with amendment 24. It concerns the control of feral species, which are defined as animals “in a wild state ... after escape from captivity or domestication.” That is important, as it is something that, to my mind, we have not done properly in Scotland for some time.”
“Presiding Officer, I would be grateful if, when we consider the motion moved by Mr Dey—which I do not intend to object to—I could be given some reassurance that, in groups where members have a considerable number of amendments, they will not be limited to eight seconds to speak to each amendment. The Presiding Officer: I call the minister to respond on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau. 14:30”
“Presiding Officer, I know that, when you and the bureau sit down to work out the timings, you do so with care, to ensure that you comply with rule 9.8 of standing orders and, specifically, paragraph 4A(a), which is on enabling members to be “given a right to speak on an amendment” in the debate. My concern is that I will be in a position where I have considerable numbers of amendments in a small number of groups and will not be able to explain them as I would hope to, which will not allow me to have the democratic process that I expect to have in this Parliament and that I believe people in Scotland expect to see when members stand up to speak and to express their views.”
“In one group, I had more than 30 amendments, yet I was given five minutes to speak to those 30 amendments. There appears to be a repetition today. In group 5, I have 36 amendments. If I am given only five minutes to speak to those amendments, maths tells me that I have about eight seconds per amendment, during which I might just be able to read out what the amendment says. On group 8, in which I have 26 amendments, the time is a little bit more generous, because I will have 11 seconds per amendment, so I might be able to explain what the first line of each amendment is about.”
“I rise to speak on the business motion. My issue with it is simple, and I will start with a quote from Winston Churchill, who said: “democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.— [Official Report, House of Commons, 11 November 1947; Vol 444, c 207.] What we are doing here is part of the democratic process. My concern with the business motion, which was agreed to by the Parliamentary Bureau yesterday—when I was in the process of my four-hour drive down to the Parliament, and therefore unable to feed in my concerns on the timetable—is that it is difficult to understand how each of the timings have been worked out. In the stage 3 debate that we had on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, I ended up with a considerable number of amendments in some groups.”
“The regulations frighten people away from doing the work that they need to do around bridges. While the cabinet secretary ponders the issue of money for the maintenance of bridges, I ask her also to ponder sending out a signal to the people who manage them, to say that if they want to take preventative action before the bridges fall down— by going into the river and digging it out to make it flow where it should, where it is channelled by those bridges—the Government and SEPA will do everything in their power to make that happen. 17:54”
“Those of us who walk along riverbanks and look under bridges will have seen that the latter build up levels of gravel underneath them. The Spey viaduct was one of those bridges that moved from the original course of the river to one of the abutments and beyond. If we are going to do maintenance work on bridges, it should be not only on their structures but on the riverbanks. The only way to do that is for people to get into the river and dig—that is it. However, something called the controlled activity regulations prohibits them from doing so. Those complex regulations require the incurring of costs and the taking of a massive amount of consideration, especially in special areas of conservation and sites of special scientific interest, as is the case with the Spey viaduct.”
“I had planned just to listen to the debate and had no intention of speaking in it, but I have been prompted to come to my feet to talk about a couple of issues. I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests in that, jointly with my brother, I own a fishery on the river Spey. I have had some knowledge of rivers for 40 years, in which time I have learned that they change regularly and that they are alive and dynamic. In the past few years, I have learned that climate change makes them even more so. In the past, we perhaps expected rivers to stay within certain boundaries, but now we know that they move and shift and do not stay within them. Increased flows and more movement of sediment and gravel make the maintenance of bridges far more important—and that is even before they fall down, not just when they do.”
“This debate is about fiscal sustainability, but I will end by talking about parliamentary sustainability, by which I mean the doggedness that the Parliament needs in order to see things through to the end. It means holding on to institutional memory while individual parliamentarians come and go. I will not be here in May, but others who are listening to the debate will be. Whoever forms the next Government, it will be up to the members of the next Scottish Parliament to hold them to account on delivery of the joint budget review on climate change. There is still quite a way to go on that. 16:13”
“The reason that I have often asked about that is to check the knowledge and understanding of it. Fundamentally, that report makes it clear that Scotland cannot get to net zero because of the anticipated finance under the terms of the current fiscal framework and because of the critical dependency on fiscal transfers. Is your committee aware of that report from a financial perspective? The Deputy Presiding Officer: Always speak through the chair. Edward Mountain: The Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee certainly considers all the costs, and we have considered the implications. The climate change plan has been drawn up by the Scottish Government, which has put some fairly opaque costings and savings in it. It is for us to drill down into those, and I am sure that we will bear in mind the point that the member made.”
“I stress that that is a personal view, not a committee view, but it is shared by some of the experts we have heard from. For instance, the Auditor General found the costs in the draft climate change plan to be vague. He said that the plan “includes limited information on how the cost estimates were calculated and what assumptions underpin them, and it recognises that there is significant uncertainty associated with many of the estimates.” Michelle Thomson: Will the member take an intervention? Edward Mountain: Will I get my time back if I give way, Deputy Presiding Officer? The Deputy Presiding Officer: I will give you some of the time back. Michelle Thomson: At both of the committees that I sit on, I have mentioned several times the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s fiscal sustainability perspectives report.”
“We are expressly bound to a carbon budget, with a spending limit of no more than 175 million tonnes of CO2 between 1 January this year and the end of 2031. Turning back to the budget that we are debating, the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee has not yet collectively considered the 2026-27 offering, so I will be careful when I express a view. I simply say that, although the committee welcomes the start that the Scottish Government has made during this parliamentary session on implementing the three key recommendations of the joint budget review, the momentum needs to be kept up. I am not sure that I have seen much momentum this year on those three strands. My concern is compounded by what I see as a lack of rigour in how the draft climate change plan sets out financial costs and benefits.”
“The Scottish Government embarked on that approach in this session with a rather simple traffic light system, but it has undertaken to “deepen”—its word—the taxonomy and to expand its coverage to make it more useful. The third strand was the development of a net zero assessment—a process to evaluate the climate impact of policies and their associated budgets early in the policy development stage. In other words, I take that process to be somewhere upstream of budget setting and a process that might even, in some cases, filter out projects or policies that are simply too costly—to borrow a word from finance—with regard to their carbon output to go anywhere near the final budget. In that connection, I remind the Parliament that what we are discussing today is not the only budget that the Parliament has to monitor.”
“The first was to include in each annual budget a climate change assessment narrative—an overview of the impact of spending decisions on the climate. That was an opportunity for the Government to go beyond the narrow confines of the balance sheet and to explain, for example, how second-order outcomes of the headline spend could have an impact on emissions and on the private finance that is needed for particular policies and projects that are linked to net zero—not in a vague and aspirational way, but by setting out concrete actions and any relevant modelling or estimates. The second strand was a so-called taxonomy approach for budget spend lines, which the cabinet secretary mentioned, that would set out how those spend lines do or do not align with emissions reduction goals.”
“Let us be clear that public confidence about Scotland’s net zero momentum and direction of travel has clearly been dented in this parliamentary session. One way for the Scottish Government to restore that confidence is for it to more convincingly show its workings on how it expects to achieve its spending decisions to drive emissions downwards. The Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee’s pre-budget representations were about the joint budget review, which was set up at the end of the previous session of Parliament to improve budget information on climate change and increase alignment between budgets and the climate change plan. I do not need to remind everyone—but I will, because people might have forgotten—that that work had three main strands.”
“I will not spend much of my speech talking about this or that line of spending in the net zero, energy and transport portfolios or about this year’s direction of travel. There will be an opportunity for the committee to consider those matters when it takes evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport next month. At those sessions, the committee will jointly consider the 2026-27 budget and the draft climate change plan—it makes sense to do so, because it is clear that the committee must read across those documents, from one to the other. I will reflect on the extent to which what we might call net zero thinking has been fully embedded in the budget-setting process.”
“I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I have a livestock farm in Moray. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the rural secretary has had with ministerial colleagues regarding the potential impact on farmers and crofters of any reintroduction of lynx into Scotland. (S6O-05392)”
“There might be rare occasions when it is unavoidable, but it seems to the committee that it happens more often than that and the system feels dysfunctional, if not broken.”
“As the committee said in its report, in a context in which holding LCMs are increasingly becoming the norm, there is no good reason for the Scottish Government to be coy about its main asks of the UK Government and to be inconsistent in sharing them. Those should be a matter of public record. For the Scottish Government, the story of the bill seems to have had a happy ending—it has obtained the amendments that it wanted, and it can now recommend that consent be given. I put on record that that happened just too late for our deliberations, with the result that the committee is not able to express an informed view on the late provisions. Asking the Parliament to agree to something without any real chance to reflect on it totally devalues the principles of legislative consent.”
“We tried again later that month, but the reply was no more illuminating. With the clock running down, we had the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy in to give evidence on 9 December. The committee found it a slightly peculiar evidence session because, on the one hand, the Scottish Government’s main line continued to be that it could not show its hand while it was still in negotiations with the UK Government and, on the other hand, the cabinet secretary and officials were perfectly happy, at times, to delve into the detail of what outcomes they wanted in respect of this or that clause.”
“As is often the way these days, it could be called a holding LCM, as it did not set out a substantive position, except in a minority of cases. The triggering provisions relate to new powers for the UK secretary of state that could intrude into Scottish marine management. One might ask how a treaty about extraterritorial waters could trigger devolution issues. The main answer that we got was about the potential impact on Scottish marine-based actors—who, I hasten to add, are not underwater thespians, but the fishing and offshore energy industries and the like. By late October, no updates had been provided, so we wrote to the Scottish Government. On 7 November, we got a reply that said that Government discussions were on-going but which provided no further substantive detail.”
“It seems to be becoming a bit of a bad habit for me to deliver an ill-tempered speech about an LCM. The last time I did so, I referred to a sense of déjà vu, because we had been in the same position too often before. Today, it is déjà vu of déjà vu, or déjà vu all over again. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill implements an international treaty about the high-seas marine areas beyond the 200-mile limit. It commits signatories to more sustainable use and protection. I remind the Parliament that the treaty was signed in 2023. It took two years to introduce the bill, and now there seems to be an unseemly race to get it over the finish line this month, apparently to meet well-telegraphed international obligations. The Scottish Government lodged a legislative consent memorandum two weeks after the bill’s introduction.”
“It was only midway through last year that Inverness fire station ended up with suitable facilities for firefighters, so that they did not have to go home, reeking of smoke and carrying back to their families and homes the contaminants that they had been exposed to during that day’s firefighting experience. That sort of thing is fundamentally wrong; I can say from personal experience that there is nothing worse than going home in soot-covered clothes and smelling of smoke. It takes days to get it out of your clothes and out of the house, and we should not impose that on firefighters’ families. Therefore, I hope that the review will cover that issue, too. I support the motion, and I call on the Government to support our firefighters, for the simple reason that, when we need them, they have to be there—and they have to be properly equipped.”
“Their training requires them to take quite long periods off work, which is an onerous commitment for their employers—even though it is vital for their communities—and I hope that at some stage the review can look at how that training could be made easier, not in terms of what the people involved have to do, but time-wise. Furthermore, I hope that we can ensure that the training is appropriate, given that certain things that firefighters might have to deal with in one area, such as fires in flats, are not things that firefighters on, say, the west coast of Scotland have to deal with. The training should be made more appealing, too. The other thing that has been definitely brought to my attention is the lack of facilities for firefighters when they return from fires. Too many fire stations have no showering facilities.”
“I do not need to remind the Parliament that there were probably more than 70 wildfires across Scotland last year, the majority of which were in the Highlands. One of the biggest—which was in the Highlands—raged for weeks. That proves that there is a lack of the equipment that we need to fight such fires. I strongly believe that there should be a centralised resource of equipment to enable firefighters to get to the hill. That could, and should, include equipment such as Argocats, which are hugely expensive—up to £30,000, in fact. I also want to touch on certain issues relating to retained firefighters that I see when I travel around the Highlands. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude, but the problem is that we do not make it easy for people to become retained firefighters.”
“The difficulty of ensuring that we deploy our retained firefighters to the right places in the Highlands is often quite stark. I dread to think how many Kinlochs are dotted round the Highlands; when we call for a fire engine to go to Kinloch, it might end up near Tongue, near Skye or elsewhere. That is an important point that we have missed. I must also compliment the Fire Brigades Union, which has been vocal in bringing these matters to the Parliament. I was going to say that I admire its militancy, but I think that that is the wrong word; perhaps I should say that I admire its tenacity in the way in which it has brought the issues to the Parliament. Indeed, I thank it for doing so, because, in the Highlands, there have been various issues, especially in the past year, that have required a huge amount of support.”
“I will start off with a couple of apologies. First, I apologise to Maggie Chapman. If I had known how you were going to address the debate and how it was going to pan out, I would have supported your motion, and I apologise to you for not doing so. The Deputy Presiding Officer: Please pass your apology through the chair, Mr Mountain. Edward Mountain: I also apologise to members for having to slip away before the end of the debate. I forewarned you of that, Presiding Officer, and agreed it with you in advance. I thank Maggie Chapman for bringing the debate to the Parliament because, as she rightly said, whenever we call for a firefighter or fire engine, it is because we need them. At that stage of need, we realise just how important they are. That is why I have always campaigned across the Highlands for a local call centre.”
“It will be done by the spring of 2028, and the Dalraddy to Slochd section by 2032. That will mean that, on completion by 2032, there will be 38 miles dualled from Inverness to Kincraig. That information on those 38 miles should reassure Edward Mountain about what is happening in the north. That is one of the significant changes in this work, but, as I mentioned, there will be an area—Glen Garry to Crubenmore—that is due by the end of 2034. I said that we are delivering the first sections on target.”
“I agree with the cabinet secretary that there should be a separate transport committee in the Parliament to overlook these projects. The final section of the A9 to be dualled will be the northern section. Yet again, that means that the Highlands come last. According to the programme, 50 per cent of the dualling will be done in the final five years, but not one bit of the A9 dualling that has been carried out so far was carried out on time. Why should the highlanders believe that you will stick to your timetable? Will you outline the contingency plans should you not reach the deadlines that you have set yourself? The Deputy Presiding Officer: Speak through the chair. Fiona Hyslop: Regarding the northern section, Tomatin to Moy is a northern section that is being worked on now.”